Of Pigs and Lieuteneths
by RoseWren
Summary: And then it suddenly dawned on Havoc that pigs were brutal creatures and that their newly spawned wings would enable them to mount an aerial attack. Suddenly every bacon strip he’d ever eaten seemed to settle in the bottom of him stomach like lead...RH/RM
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

She was never late. It was a universal truth, like office hours start at seven, the military never gives out true vacations, and fictional characters will always trump real men. These were the better known truths, yet one that ranked up there was that Riza Hawkeye was never late to _anything. _

Second Lieutenant Havoc resisted the urge to step outside and check for flying pigs. The thought was but a fleeting fancy as, after a moment of serious consideration, he decided that in his state of alcohol induced stupor it was unlikely he could find the door if it dropped out from underneath him. He giggled at the thought, and Colonel Roy Mustang, his partner in crime, propped his head up on his desk so he could look at his colleague.

The Second Lieutenant thrust an arm over his head, blindly groping for the telephone he knew was around there. The couch groaned in protest, springs creaking as, with a victorious grin, the man toppled from his precarious perch.

"Happy New Years," croaked the Colonel from the desk with a crooked grin, one hand clenched about the long neck of a wine bottle and the other trailing limply over the window ledge. From his position on the floor, Havoc was in no position to appreciate the finer subtleties of humor—a fact he pointed out to his superior in deafening expletives.

"Fartface," Grumbled Havoc, subsiding. Mustang grinned widely, winced, and buried his face in the wide sleeve of his great coat. A long moment passed as each of the men contemplated the dubious wisdom of liquor at military fetes.

"Maybe we'll veto the bar next year," Mustang muttered into the crook of his arm. "What do you think?"

"Wonder where the First Lieutenant was." Havoc said, addressing the ceiling.

Mustang massaged his neck gingerly, setting the bottle onto a ledge through the window only he could see and leaving it there. The bottle dropped like a stone through and the crash echoed up. Apparently the effect was a satisfactory one and he began to rifle through his desk to search for another. He paused as Havoc's words sunk in, however, and frowned, "Don't know."

Havoc massaged what was no doubt shaping up to be a pounding headache and attempted coherent speech with doubtful success. "Pigs are a'flewing cuz Hawke—, 'scuze me, the Firth Lieutenath…was late. Col-noll. Sir."

And then it suddenly dawned on Havoc that pigs were brutal creatures and that their newly spawned wings would enable them to mount an aerial attack. Suddenly every bacon strip he'd ever eaten seemed to settle in the bottom of him stomach like lead. "Ah pig air raigh! 'Elp Col-noll!"

The Colonel was obviously failing to grasp the seriousness to the situation—well, that or just cracked. Pigs did that to the best of men. Either way, his superior was sitting on the couch and giggling as he watched Havoc's terrified attempts to stand.

"Colonel," admonished Havoc as his superior eased him off the floor and slung his torso over his shoulder in a modified fireman's carry. Or, at least, this is what he was attempting to do. The end effect was something that can be commonly seen in most bars, pubs, or clubs: that of two men held up with wine, spit, and prayers.

"Let's go check on the Lieutenant," said the raven-haired man, tugging up the collar of his coat, "it's not like her to be late, you know."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

The lights were out in her apartment building as they drove up in the wee hours, the tenement's brick façade lined with roosting pigeons and the trees on the boulevard arching against the sky. Mustang sustained a flame between a thumb and fore-finger, other hand secured about his companion's waist as he hauled him out of the cab he'd ordered.

The establishment was something very much like he imagined when he thought of Hawkeye. Discreet, clean, and with a personality he thought was rather lent to it by the numerous military personnel who patronized it.

However, in his slightly off-kelter state, Mustang was of no mind to appreciate it.

The front desk was manned by a surly looking fellow who refused to be cooperative until Colonel Mustang of the Ishbalan Campaign and Countless Other Important Ventures decided to press the issue. Very gently of course, but the effect was something akin to a personality transplant.

Thanking the Gods of Sensible Women through his stupor, Mustang navigated the hallways of the ground floor behind the doorman—stairs would've surely been utterly beyond him. Ease being a relative term which meant that the two officers they only lost track of the floor-ceiling relationship twice. As a result, Havoc was blissfully unconscious for the better part of the proceedings.

She was cloistered away behind a door so discreet it could have easily been taken for a storage closet, back in the farthest room from the front and closest to the employee exit. Again, he thought, Sensible Woman.

He didn't bother knocking and, in the rational corner of his mind (which was to say, unimpaired by the better parts of two bottles of fine vintage) a little voice was dimly screaming that entering Riza Hawkeye's domain, without her permission, was quite possibly one of the most foolish things he'd ever done.

He only smiled and used a trickle of alchemy to coax the lock open, stepping into the apartment and shutting the door gently behind him.

It was made easier to ignore the voice when he saw her sitting on a couch, surrounded by a veritable mountain of tissues, and easier still when he noticed her state of undress. For her, that was, he amended, looking wistfully at her long sleeved shirt and slacks.

The second thing he noticed was that Hawkeye seemed halfway through a stack of his reports and the better part of the way through her second box of tissues. Third, that she was chilled through the multiple layers of comforter she had cocooned about herself. And fourth, she had a shaking semi leveled at his chest.

"Lieutenant?"

She paused, forcing her eyes to focus on his face. Her pupils were slightly dilated, but she made a heroic attempt at her usual salute.

The gun fell to the carpet with a dull thump and he picked it up, turned in over in his hands once, and handed it back to her. The woman shook her head wearily and flicked the safety on, dropping back to the couch and forcing it between two flowery monstrosities, loosely deemed pillows.

Mustang tried not to stare but it was impossible.

He'd be the last to admit such a breach of professional courtesy, but he'd occasionally listened in as his men sat and gossiped like old biddies, wondering with a kind of shocked speculation as to what kind of place their first lieutenant would live in. Breda, of course, immediately insisted the office, folded up neatly in Mustang's desk like a particularly large and scary-looking report; Falman and Havoc, a genie lamp, appearing when you least wanted her and swooping down like the goddess of superior officers; Fuery, however, was obstinately sticking with the idea of a double life and somewhere she had a husband, five kids, and a white picket fence tucked away.

At this, Mustang, experiencing rather painful palpitations under his left collarbone, asserted that she lived in a foxhole with a gun dammit and that would be the end of that. No need whatsoever to go poking into her business and if anyone was so very nosy enough to actually find out the actual location it would be their duty as enlisted men to tell him, right?

But when faced with the actual apartment, he was rather surprised at the whole girlishness of it all. Not too overtly, not enough so that his masculinity was cast into question, but certainly uncomfortably feminine. Flowers and whiffs of fragrance were all very well but a man could only take so much before he felt like perhaps fleeing to the safe haven of Cars and Their Men. Something that told the world that despite the alluring, spicy scent wafting under their noses, that these men were not taken in.

That he was not taken in. He eyed the pillows darkly.

"Sir?" She asked, and he wondered dimly that if he listened closely enough, that he might hear the vertebrae of her spine clicking into formation.

"We need a place to stay for the night." The unprofessionalness of the request suddenly hit him and he cringed a little inside.

Silence.

"Guest room to your right, second room off the hallway." If she said it a little quickly, or a little too off-pitch, Mustang forgave her. She was simply being tactfully surprised.

Mustang gave a little smile as he dragged the limp form of the Second Lieutenant into the guest room and flung him onto the bed in an undignified heap. The Colonel stared at his subordinate for a moment, wondering woodenly if it wouldn't be too mother-hen-like to tuck the man in, but wouldn't he be cold if he didn't? Mustang narrowed his eyes at a suspicious looking perfumey-bottley monstrosity sitting on the edge of the nightstand, but did roughly do up the covers about his comrade's chin.

There was, however, the problem that there was only one bed and…

The Colonel attempted very gently, very quietly, to bash his brains out on a convenient bedroom wall. Hopefully the First Lieutenant wouldn't mind the mess too much in the morning.


End file.
